The Purple Guillotine
by Findlecraft
Summary: A short story, written a few years ago by myself but still relevant nonetheless. I will continue to publish these dystopian-esque short stories in or out of this 'universe' of the Purple Guillotine if this does ok. Feel free to comment, it really helps me!


p class="p1"span class="s1"Epiphanios Bernard McAdams stepped out of his detached house in Morley, and on to his dead and mottled front lawn. The night was hushed and breezy, a blanket of stillness with the only noise being the occasional patrol helicopter which encircled the class="Apple-converted-space" /span/span/p  
p class="p2" /p  
p class="p3"span class="s1"Piph jogged slowly down the street, it was hard to be quiet when you were as unfit as Piph. He marvelled at the clear sky, the last time he had seen it like that was, well… He jogged on, his chest becoming tight, partially because of the strain of jogging for the first time in years but mostly due to his feeling of something watching him, and it wasn't just the trees. He suddenly had a second thought, maybe the helicopter he had just seen had been searching for class="Apple-converted-space" /span/span/p  
p class="p4" /p  
p class="p3"span class="s1"He rounded a corner, only to be confronted by an angry purple banner, stretched across the street; the totalitarian society that he lived in now was so draconian and narcissistic that it had to have its image branded in the centre of every road. He jogged a bit faster, moving into the middle of the road, there were never any cars anymore, so he didn't have to worry on that class="Apple-converted-space" /span/span/p  
p class="p4" /p  
p class="p3"span class="s1"The air was dense with the night, it was so silent he could almost taste the lack of sound in the air surrounding him. This shouldn't have unnerved him, but it did. For a minute, he lost concentration and tripped, stumbling over his own feet. He sat up dazed, he had overlooked how awkward it was to keep at this pace without harming himself, he was only used to such mundane tasks as making his way from his kitchen to his class="Apple-converted-space" /span/span/p  
p class="p4" /p  
p class="p3"span class="s1"After a couple of minutes of half-walking half-jogging he began to notice a rather low and desolate hedge. Going over to it he noticed a meadow beyond it. He had a deep-rooted desire to clamber over and lie down. But he knew he must be alert, he knew he had to be… The metal power boots of an RT (Region Trooper) crescendoed from heard from around the corner. A purple light then followed and started to influence the road, displaying itself against the harsh dark tarmac. He wasted no time in leaping awkwardly over the hedge and onto the exacting thorns that raked his belly through the thin, pitiful excuse of a class="Apple-converted-space" /span/span/p  
p class="p5" /p  
p class="p3"span class="s1"He landed hard but wasted no time in rolling as close to the hedge as humanly possible; by now he was oblivious to the cuts and bruises that covered his body. He repeated a chant under his breath./span/p  
p class="p4" /p  
p class="p3"span class="s1"After what felt like cryo-years had passed he finally heard the mechanised walking of the retreating region trouper receding along another nameless street to patrol another of the countless sectors under its unforgiving watch. Piph gradually got to his feet, he knew he had to be more careful now. He looked around. Siting a faint lamppost on the other side of the field. He started to make his way towards it. Jogging and picking up a pace./span/p  
p class="p4" /p  
p class="p3"span class="s1"The only reason he wasn't blown up immediately was because he was listening. Listening out for the region troupers or the helicopter. Anything but this. Click. He was stopped dead in his tracks. He didn't dare look down to where his foot had come to rest on a particularly hard part of the overgrown mess once known as a field. But he had to, and when he did he saw a small metal pressure plate. Dormant in the long grass. He knew from countless Warfare Simulation Games that what he had just stepped on was a VA-PAM, a Victim-Activated Anti-Personnel Mine. He knew he was too unfit to dive away before the mine was detonated. A small whimper escaped his class="Apple-converted-space" /span/span/p  
p class="p6" /p  
p class="p7"span class="s1"14 miles away in a basement of a region called Greyhill. A nameless girl would have heard a boy some knew as Piph detonate in the middle of nowhere in a meadow full of land mines, except she didn't, she was too engrossed in her computer, her world was no longer the trees and the road, the forests and the buildings, it was the internet, the hub. No one would miss Piph, no one knew him personally, all emthey/em saw was his online avatar attending school and social events. There wouldn't even be a class="Apple-converted-space" /span/span/p 


End file.
